


Getting Home Again (The Kidnappers Never Prosper Remix)

by antigrav_vector



Category: Captain America (Comics), Iron Man (Comics), Marvel, Marvel (Comics), The Avengers (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Fluff, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Avengers Vol. 3 (1998), Captivity, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Hurt Tony, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, M/M, Rescue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-25
Updated: 2017-02-25
Packaged: 2018-09-22 00:33:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9573980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antigrav_vector/pseuds/antigrav_vector
Summary: He was asleep when Tony was taken, and it's left Steve a wreck. Now he's got to keep it together long enough to get Tony back...





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Kidnapped! (again)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7344394) by [Muccamukk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muccamukk/pseuds/Muccamukk). 
  * In response to a prompt by [Muccamukk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muccamukk/pseuds/Muccamukk) in the [Cap_Ironman_Remix_Madness_2017](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Cap_Ironman_Remix_Madness_2017) collection. 



> Written for [Muccamukk](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Muccamukk/pseuds/Muccamukk)for Remix Madness 2017, based on [Kidnapped! (again)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7344394). Unbeta'ed.
> 
> Due to the nature of the original, this fic contains mention of captivity and a certain amount of Tony and Steve suffering, but no explicit torture.

It had taken them most of the first day to realise anything was wrong.

Only when Ms. Fujikawa had contacted them, asking whether they knew where Tony was did they realise anything had happened. Steve was still kicking himself over that. Ms. Fujikawa had only called them because she knew they kept close contact with Tony and the men who'd attempted to attack her had said something about grabbing him as well before they'd been more or less squashed by her bodyguards.

Naturally, he and the others had tried to contact Tony as soon as they'd gotten the news.

To no avail.

It was as though Tony had fallen off the map entirely. He wasn't answering his phone or his Avengers comms, and that was worrying. Then, they'd hit the next hurdle; thanks to the very low signal strength, tracing his comm's location was difficult. It took the team an hour to narrow their search area down to New York City, but they couldn't pin down a precise location.

Worse, Tony's comms -- with or without Tony himself -- had ended up in the warehouse district, and it took them nearly another full day to track down the right building, even after they'd tried to make their search as targeted as possible.

And, now that they were staring up at the facade of the last building in their search radius, Steve found himself hoping with everything in him that they weren't already too late.

The comm's signal hadn't moved in all that time. What that meant... Well, that was the problem. It could mean anything. Maybe Tony was somewhere else entirely and his captors had simply dumped the comm link here. Maybe it was even worse.

Steve didn't allow himself to think about that last very final possibility.

He'd deal with that if and when it came to pass.

"Alright, team," he said, once he'd swallowed down the tight lump in his throat, "let's go!"

He got a series of silent nods in response, the rest of them almost as subdued as he was, but they all joined the search gamely enough, even if some of their expressions were a bit grim. Carol in particular looked like she didn't want to find Tony, if anything really had happened.

T'challa, his expression hidden behind his mask, appeared next to Steve as if conjured. "I will search the basement floors. This warehouse is more extensive than it appears."

"I'll go with you. Team, pair off and search the upper levels. And be careful."

Without waiting for their ayes, he turned back to T'challa. "Lead the way. We'll split up once we're down there."

They found a light switch just beyond the last landing of the stairwell and hit it, revealing that they'd come to approximately the center of a long corridor that stretched off in both directions, lined with what looked like storerooms and caches of maintenance supplies.

"You take left, I'll take right," Steve suggested, and they were off.

He didn't pay attention to what T'challa was doing, instead impatiently kicking down each door that he found. The first four were storerooms, filled with dust and boxes.

The fifth, though. When the door opened, slamming into the wall with a loud clang of metal on concrete, and the light from the corridor spilled into the room, Steve heard a pained hiss.

His attention immediately caught, Steve started searching the room. If this was an ambush, it was either a very good one or a very bad one.

The sight of a scuffed business shoe decided him that it was neither. He recognized it, with a pang. "Tony?"

He got no reply, and that was worrying.

"Tony!"

It took a few more calls of his name before Tony's eyes opened properly. He could see that, even as he hurried around the stacks of boxes and other junk cluttering the room. He cued his comm once he was sure Tony was aware of his surroundings. "I've found him," he told the team.

Tony's hands were tightly bound and there was some sort of collar around his neck. It was worrying to see. "Are you hurt?"

"Just the shiner," Tony told him, his voice hoarse, sounding a bit distant and very tired. "I lost feeling in my hands a while ago."

The collar around Tony's neck looked like it was meant to do more than just restrain, and Steve needed to know more. He reached out to gently tip Tony's chin up so he could see the thing better. "What does this do?" He asked Tony quietly, wondering if the thing was going to cause some kind of injury if Tony moved at all. If that was why he was here, half seated and half sprawled, as though he had been tossed there by his captors and hadn't dared move an inch.

The question got a shake of Tony's head that made Steve flinch. 

"If it was motion sensitive, I'd have blown myself up days ago," Tony said, probably more harshly than he'd meant to. "Just untie me."

"I'll get T'Challa to look at it," Steve told him, keeping his voice calm, soothing away what he could of the tension Tony was showing. "Later."

It was high time to get Tony out of those bonds. If Tony was already losing feeling in his hands, that was a bad sign. He hurried the process as much as he could, but his heat knife took time to cut through whatever rope Tony's captors had used on him. "When was the last time you ate?" he asked as he sawed at the coils.

Tony didn't meet his eyes. "Dinner with you," he answered. Then, as though the question has unleashed a flood of words, he added, "How long have I been here? What's going on? God, I hate getting kidnapped. Tell me you brought my suit."

Steve could hear the plaintive near-whine in the words, but carefully didn't mention it. "Sorry, Tony," he replied. "It's been about forty hours. As far as we can tell, they grabbed you for ransom, then tried to go after Ms. Fujikawa, too, and her bodyguards immolated them. We've been looking for days. We only just tracked them back here."

"Idiots," he heard Tony mutter, his tone scathing through the hoarseness of a dry throat.

Steve swallowed and kept his eyes on the heat knife, unwilling to add to Tony's injuries. If he couldn't feel his hands, he probably wouldn't notice if he got cut with the knife. Then, as though by magic, the last of the ropes finally parted, and he put the knife away, pulling his gloves off with his teeth so that he could check Tony over sooner.

Tony's hands were limp in his grip, the skin cold, and the muscles lax. It was clearly stressing Tony that his hands might have taken real damage, and Steve couldn't tell him one way or the other whether they had or not. He was no field medic and he knew it. Instead, he took Tony's hands in his and rubbed them gently, trying to get the blood flowing again and warm them.

A silence held between them for a moment, before Steve broke it. "I was so worried. They grabbed you and took you away, and I was sleeping."

He might never forgive himself, either, if this resulted in Tony losing his hands, or, worse, keeping them but having to cope with permanent injury to the nerves or other tissues. Tony's hands were his livelihood, and Steve's favourite part of him, for their expressiveness, and their capability. Tony could create wonders with those hands. Could make him feel wonders.

If he lost them...

It surprised Steve when the rest of the team finally burst into the small room to fuss over Tony. T'challa was first, despite having meticulously checked the rest of the rooms on his side of the hallway, judging by how long it had taken him to appear. Carol was hard on his heels, and Jan right behind her.

The next few minutes were an almost frenzied rush of activity as they got Tony to the quinjet and into its medbay. Steve noted that Tony looked dazed throughout the move and probably didn't register any of it. His hands, which had started slowly flushing red again, had to be hurting him like hell.

When they got him settled, Carol had to forcibly drag him away from Tony to copilot. "No, Steve," she told him, "you need a distraction right now, and this is the best one I've got. Let T'challa deal with that bit of tech around his neck."

"But--"

"Sit your butt in that chair or I will find a way to make you." Carol glared at him. "If you think I'm doing any better than you are, right now, you'd better think again. If the men who took him weren't already paste, I'd find them and tenderize them with my fists," she gritted out between her clenched teeth.

Biting back the remaining words of protest that wanted to burst free, Steve did as Carol wanted. She had a point; he wasn't really thinking clearly and he knew it.

Steve wasn't sure how much time had passed before T'challa popped back up beside him and put a hand on his shoulder. "Go sit with him," T'challa suggested. "You both could use the comfort."

Before Carol could say anything against that, Steve was out of his seat. "Thanks, I will."

Carol said something to T'challa that Steve ignored in favor of taking a private moment with Tony. It was a distinct relief to see that the collar, whatever it was, had been removed. Even if Tony definitely was still in distress.

Picking up Tony's hands in one of his and Tony himself in the other arm, he tucked his lover against him, chest-to-chest, until the sappy urge to smother Tony in kisses became too strong to resist. It didn't even matter where they landed -- cheeks, nose, forehead, closed eyelids -- as long as Tony was here and in his arms. "I'm sorry I wasn't there," he said softly as he dropped a final kiss onto Tony's lips, and gathered him up close in his arms again. "I won't make the same mistake a second time. For now I'm just glad you're alright."

Tony made a soft sound.

"Don't worry," Steve told him, "it'll be alright. You'll be fine. I've got you."

He kept up the quiet litany until he felt Tony relax into his arms.

Eventually he got a reply. "Thank you for coming for me."

"Always," Steve said, letting the fierce determination he felt underscore the words. "I will always come for you. No matter what."

They stayed like that for a few minutes and Steve only realised Tony had drifted off when a soft snore alerted him to the fact. He couldn't stop the relieved sigh that boiled up from somewhere in the pit of his stomach, and let his own eyes fall shut as Carol bore them safely and securely home. He didn't let go of Tony's hands.

When they got back to the Mansion, Steve didn't hesitate. He scooped Tony -- who was still asleep -- up into his arms and carried him off the quinjet. He had no injuries that required more than monitoring, so Steve nodded to the others and simply took Tony to bed.

He pulled Tony's shoes off, careful not to wake him, then peeled off the outer layers of the now ruined suit, loosened the collar of his shirt, and tucked him under the covers. The suit landed in a crumpled heap on the floor and Steve considered leaving the room to go find Carol and ask her to handle the debrief. Tony put a stop to that, making a plaintive questioning sound high in his throat and groping around Steve's side of the bed, clearly searching for him.

He couldn't resist that. Stripping off his boots and dirty uniform and dropping it on the pile of suit, Steve slipped under the covers himself, and let Tony latch onto him. Strong arms went around Steve's waist and Tony's head came to rest on his chest. Steve smoothed back Tony's hair, and let him do as he wished.

They could deal with the consequences of this kidnapping tomorrow.


End file.
